


Blossom

by kalypso_of_ogygia



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Reaping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 03:59:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15452871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypso_of_ogygia/pseuds/kalypso_of_ogygia
Summary: Another year, another reaping, I think to myself. And another year safe.





	Blossom

**Author's Note:**

> An AU where Katniss doesn't volunteer as tribute

_Another year, another reaping,_ I think to myself. _And another year safe_.

Still, it hasn’t sunken in yet: another two offspring of dust-covered District 12 have been plucked and placed on the chopping board, waiting for the butcher’s knife to come down in a frenzied bloodbath.

My neck is safe; theirs aren’t.

My mother’s arms wrapped around me tightly, and the hammer of her heart was feverish against her chest. As cool and collected as she’d looked, I know that she feared for me, for what might happen if I ended up in that arena. The relief was screaming from her eyes. Even my father, usually stoic in his interactions with me now that I’ve grown, gripped my hand like a tourniquet, unwilling to let his daughter go. I didn’t mind and I was sure that this was what the reaping did to all of us—it brought us closer in ways that the normal things couldn’t.

But that was all hours ago. We’d already eaten our supper of beef stew and greens from the Hob, with the little berries that my mother had gleaned earlier this morning before my father could leave for the mines. They tucked me in and kissed me on my forehead before departing for their own bed, a few yards away. We were full, comforted, and almost… safe. The reaping isn’t over for me but here we are: all together under a roof, sleeping.

At least they are.

I turn on my side, facing the window across the room. Darkness settles on District 12 l and you can just barely make out the shapes of figures shivering against the grass, of dogs chasing the ghosts of dead coalminers, of the fence that separates them from the real world. They are grotesque and distorted in the dim moonlight, and everything that moves seems like a monster. Even the houses in the Seam look more unfriendly than they do in the sunlight, almost as if they, too, mourn the losses of the two families who weren’t spared. I can see little Macy Lou’s house, the leaning shack looking even more desolate without the joyous twelve-year-old. And though I can’t see his house all the way over Victor’s Village, Pan’s home must look as desolate despite the warmth of the ovens in their kitchen and the kindness from Miss Delly, his mother. Her cheer is not enough to brighten their closed-off house, or any other closed-off house. It is simply not enough.

Yet, is anything ever enough for the Capitol? Most of us starve in the streets, dying off one by one as new mouths to feed open in defiance. They take two children, two _futures_ , every year to die in a twisted game show where only one can walk away with blood on his hands. And no one is spared: twelve starving districts, twelve industries to leech off of, and twenty-four children to lock up and kill.

“Prim…” my mother whispers in her sleep. It is a whisper full of pain for an aunt I never knew. She is why my mother fears the Games. She is the very thing my mother doesn’t want me to become. _Dead_.

She was twelve when they drew her name. Just like Macy Lou. My mother had been speechless as her sister went up the stage. All eyes were on her. Aunt Prim put on a brave face even as the male tribute, Peeta Mellark, joined her. Everyone thought they were as good as dead. That this time next week their corpses would be caught up in the claws of the Capitol. But no one would’ve guessed that the baker’s son would win. He camouflaged into the surroundings, able to outfox even the smartest of them all, and survived. The same could not be said for Aunt Prim, who died at the bloodbath.

The baker boy has since taken over his father’s shop, married a nice girl, and had two sons.

And Prim… no one talks about her anymore.

I let a breath out, thinking about the baker. He must be feeling terrible, _robbed_ even. He lost a childhood and his innocence. Now, he loses his son. _Pan_. I bet he’s at the Capitol by now, being celebrated by intoxicated people with noxious delusions. It must be a nightmare to be him right now, to be sentenced to die all dolled up and famous. Maybe that’s what his father felt when he left for the Games. Maybe Pan still has a chance.

_What does it matter, though?_  The thought bounces off of the walls of my skull, scattering the budding feelings of pity for these strangers. If Pan doesn’t die, someone else will. If he does, it’s the same. Nothing changes. Just a different person gets to walk out alive.

But hey, I’m not mad at the baker. He couldn’t have saved Prim. And he’s always been kind to us, especially so with my mother. He gives her this soft and gentle look and, while she’s always been civil, she never knew what to make of it. I’d rather think it is sympathy.

I’m used to it even if my parents aren’t. This is what I think as I settle into my bed and feel the touch of sleep on my eyelids. Besides, that’s how his other son looks at me. How can I not be used to the Mellarks’ sympathetic looks?

The next day is a brilliant example.

At school, I push through the usual crowds before my teachers can think to call me late. I weave through the bodies of downcast eyes and whispers surrounding the very boy I was thinking of before I slept.

Nichol Mellark. With his merchant’s blond hair swept over his merchant’s blue eyes, he looks so much like his father. He also inherited his father’s kindness and part of his mother’s cheerfulness. But most definitely, he has the look in his father’s eyes that is never directed at anyone else but me.

He hasn’t noticed me yet. He seems shell-shocked, actually. The wall of whispers builds itself around him, just waiting to topple down and bury him in pity. I want to go (Lord knows he doesn’t need to see _my_ sympathy) but there’s something about the look in his eyes that makes me stop. No, it’s not _that_ look. It’s more painful in comparison.

It’s the look of a lost boy when he’s made another wrong turn. It’s the look of a starving man as he begs you for crumbs. It’s the stare of the woman at the whorehouse that pegs unto every passerby as she waits for a customer. It’s the sound of a baby’s cry when it is skin and bones. It’s in the voice of my own mother whenever she talks of her sister. And every time— _every_ time—I see it, hear it, feel it… my own heart breaks. They’ve lost something that I couldn’t give back, that I can never give back.

Nichol chooses this time to look up at me, and I see all the heartache written in blue ink across his eyelids. He stares at me, and I at him. We don’t say anything.

But I want to say I’m sorry. That he’s not alone. That there are others who also grieve. And yet I don’t. I don’t say anything.

“Blossom Hawthorne! Where are you and why haven’t you reported to the office yet?”

I can see that there’s also something on his mind, something that he wants to tell me as well. He takes a step toward me, but no.

I’m already walking away.

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted on ogygianmentality@tumblr.com


End file.
